Google Celebrates Its 13th Birthday with a Doodle

The search engine giant and one of the best known brands on the internet, Google has just turned 13 today. Google is celebrating its birthday by dedicating itself a Google birthday Doodle, marking the 13th anniversary of awesomeness.

The Google Doodle always comes with hidden meanings, and has so much to say. Today’s doodle comes with a cake lighted with 13 candles and 3 caps. It also has 3 gifts placed on the table. In my perception, it means to me that each of the caps belong the “Google Guys” – Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt – the three key persons who founded Google in September 1998.

One cannot imagine life without Google. Google search along with its several other awesome services has played an important role in our life. “Google” itself has become a synonym for “web search”, and no doubt it is the most preferred search engine.

In celebration of Google’s birthday, here’s a look back at Google’s birthday doodle since 2002 –

2002 – Google’s First Birthday Doodle

Google came up with its first birthday doodle in September 27, 2002. The search engine giant turned the letter “L” into a 4 along with a virtual birthday cake accompanying it. During this year, Google introduced some major features, which include –

2003 – Google Turns 5

Google celebrated its 5th birthday by presenting a doodle similar to its 4th birthday. The letter “L” was changed to 5 and had a cake along with a cap on top of the “O. During this year, Google acquired Blogger.com and introduced Google AdSense.

2004 – Google Celebrates 5th Birthday

Google had too much of cake in its last 2 years of celebration and decided to go on a diet on its 6th birthday. The 6th anniversary of Google doodle saw balloons and the letter “O” replaced with 6. In this year, the company said that it sold 19,605,052 shares with an opening price of $85 per share. At present, Google’s stock price is $531. It introduced the following services –

2005 – Google Turns 7

Google certainly missed the cake in its 6th birthday and this time it decided not to go on a diet. The Google doodle included 7 pieces of cake along with the letter “L” replaced with 7. This was a big year for Google, as we saw several number services launched including Google Maps and Google Talk.

2006 – Happy 8th Birthday

Google continued the tradition of celebrating its birthday with a Google Doodle and a cake. But this time it was a one-cupcake birthday celebration, with the second “G” turned into an 8. This was yet another big year for Google as it debuted more interesting new service –

2008 – Happy 10th Birthday!

Celebrating its 10th decade, Google decided to create a doodle with its first logo when it was initially launched. During this year, the most notable event for Google was the launch of first the Android-based phone, T-Mobile G1. Along with that, Google also –

2009 – Google’s 11th Birthday

On its 11th birthday, Google kept its doodle quite simple as it just replaced the “L” with 11. However, there were no birthday cakes this time. Probably the doodle was made simple to indicate that it was just another “Google year” and it was working real hard to revolutionize the web.

In this year, Google announced Google Chrome OS for netbooks. It also made its debut on Twitter and tweeted its first message with a stream of 0s and 1s, which indicated “I’m feeling lucky”

On May 14th, Google was down for a few hours due to a simple traffic jam at an Asian data centre. This outage left 14% of its user base without Google’s several online services. However, Google apologized for the inconvenience caused in a blog post

2010 – Google Celebrates its 12th Birthday

By now, Google became a part of everyone’s life. The 12th Google birthday doodle had a candle which represents the “L” in the Google logo. The doodle is a painting by an American artist Wayne Thiebaud, who was known for painting images of cakes, ice creams, toys and candy.

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Joel Fernandes

Joel Fernandes (G+) is a tech enthusiast and a social media blogger. During his leisure time, he enjoys taking photographs, and photography is one of his most loved hobbies. You can find some of his photos on Flickr.He does a little of web coding, and maintains a tech blog of his own - Techo Latte.Joel is currently pursuing his Masters in Computer Application from Bangalore, India. You can get in touch with him on Twitter - @joelfernandes, or visit his Facebook Profile for more information. View all posts by Joel Fernandes